CONSEQUENCES OF COMPETITION ON PRICE, CREDIT, AND SIGNAL If we compete on price,

CONSEQUENCES OF COMPETITION ON PRICE, CREDIT, AND SIGNAL

If we compete on price, then the person with the greatest access to credit will use that credit to drive competitors out of the market and then recapture the losses with gains in market share.

The only solution to financial competition is aesthetic competition (signaling) which inverts the value of price.

Most goods today are sold on aesthetics or signals not price, because the marginal difference in the utility of goods is near zero.

This presents high cultures with a material economic problem because it is all well and good to move people out of the farm, then out of physical labor, and into their own proprietary spaces. But after that, you are stuck with all competition for consumers and their spending limited to little more than signaling.

And the luxury and signaling goods that people seek once material signaling is exhausted, are free time, and rents.

That’s the death spiral of the consumer society.